


Fever

by Jae



Category: Deadwood
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-01-20
Updated: 2007-01-20
Packaged: 2017-10-06 12:46:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,319
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/53812
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jae/pseuds/Jae
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The pleasure of the fucking flesh, they call it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fever

The room is dark and dank, a lingering smell of sweat and fear hovering like a ghost around the bed where the widow lies. For once she's quiet, or mostly so, a tremble shaking her every now and then and if she's not asleep this stage of the sickness is so like as not to make a fucking difference. Trixie walks to the window and pulls open the heavy drapes, then leans out and throws open the window. The air's never too fucking fresh in Deadwood but anything's better than the room. There's always a stench to death, whether it's in the dirt of some fucking shack in the backwoods or in what passes for a spread of fucking luxury, and whether it's a person dying or just the part of them that loved what they shouldn't.

The dope sickness takes everyone a different way, they say, and for sure Trixie remembers more fucking screaming and swearing as she passed it. They say it's like fucking childbirth, too, in that you don't remember the pain once it's passed but Trixie's never forgotten a pain in her life and God knows there's been enough of them. That's how you survive, by remembering which fires burnt your hand. You might shove your fucking hand into the flame again if you have to, hoping to pull out some treasure or to finally be fucking consumed, but you do it a little more fucking careful after the first time. It's a necessary thing, both the pain and the memory.

On the bed the widow shudders and stirs, throwing a hand over her eyes against the sunlight. Trixie moves to pull the drapes again and the widow's arm reaches out to her. "Leave it," she says, and Trixie does.

"Here," the widow says, her voice like it has been every time Trixie's heard it, like only the thinnest whisper can slide past her lips without pain. "Here, to me, come to me," and Trixie does, sitting on the edge of the bed and dipping a cloth in the bowl of water on the table beside.

"It'll pass," Trixie says, like she's said before more times than she can count, like she's said before to more people than she'd like to count. They're the only words of comfort she knows that she's sure aren't a fucking lie. Everything passes, if you fucking wait long enough, and everyone waits long enough because what other fucking choice have you? She wipes the cloth across the widow's forehead and the woman opens her eyes wide, suddenly.

"Here," she says again, and her voice is thicker now, her cracked lips straining with the words. "To me, come to me," and Trixie dips the wet cloth to her lips, lets her suck against it. Working against Trixie's hand the widow's lips feel rougher than they look, torn in a thousand tiny places by the desperate dryness the sickness brings.

"Shh," Trixie says, and takes the cloth away to drench it again.

The widow surges up, reaching out to Trixie. "Please, to me," she says, and Trixie eases her back down with a hand on her stomach. There's lace on her gown, finer and more delicate than Trixie has ever touched before, and the small stiff stitches are as rough against her hand as the widow's mouth.

"Here," she says, offering the cloth again, and the widow grasps Trixie's wrist with a strength Trixie hadn't figured her to have and presses her mouth to the wet, her head and shoulders lifting from the bed. Then the widow lets go and falls sighing back down, her mouth open and a drop or two of water still glistening there.

Sweat is breaking out on her forehead again, the fucking fever rising back to the surface of her skin and it's a good sign, Trixie knows, a good sign when the sickness starts to come out instead of staying locked in like a secret. She wets the cloth again and wipes the widow's neck and her face. The woman's eyes and mouth are half-open now, like the effort of opening or closing them is too much for her, and her dark hair tumbles loosely around her, curly tendrils slipping down the sides of her face as carelessly as her silk robe slipping down her shoulders. She grips Trixie's hand again and Trixie lifts the cloth to her lips but the widow knocks it away with that strength Trixie hadn't realized was in her.

The widow raises up again on one elbow, pulling herself with her hand on Trixie's wrist. She sits up and her eyes open wide, and then her mouth. "Oh, my darling," she breathes, "you've come back to me."

"Shh," Trixie says, "shh," and the widow spreads her fingers in Trixie's hair, lifting herself closer to Trixie, so close she could whisper into her ear.

"Oh, my darling," the widow says, and kisses Trixie, hard, her tongue slow and hot in Trixie's mouth, searching like there's something inside Trixie she knows, something she knows she wants and will not be denied. Trixie's not sure what man it is the woman's remembering, but she'd lay fucking wager it's not the husband whose body lies cooling in the creek. Well, good for fucking her, Trixie thinks, she's no fucking prude nor preacher to judge who a woman lies with. Good for fucking her if she did it for the fucking pleasure, and Trixie'd lay wager the woman did, the way she moves against Trixie, her lips dry and rough and her mouth wet and soft. The pleasure of the fucking flesh, they call it, mostly talking men who haven't known any fucking pleasure at all except that of imposing their own fucking will on another and hearing their own fucking voices in their ears, but there can be a fucking pleasure in it, rare and rarer for women, rarer for women like fucking Trixie and rarest of all for women like this one, Trixie would have said, but there can be a fucking pleasure in it and she can always tell, Trixie can, when someone's known it. It stays with you, no matter how much fucking pain there's been before or after, the pleasure sticks somewhere on the inside of your skin just waiting for someone else to search it out.

"Shh," Trixie says again, and breaks away as gently as she can, more gently, Trixie'd fucking swear, than the widow was left by whatever fucking man she's dreaming of.

"Oh, my darling girl," the widow says, and Trixie laughs a little in surprise. Trixie wouldn't have thought it of her but good for fucking her.

"To me, back to me," the widow says again, low and soft and it's a moan, and she's sweating out the fever and the dope and who fucking knows what else. Trixie sure as hell doesn't know what all the widow's been hiding inside her white nightgown and her whiter skin. She's twisting now in the sheets, the widow, and her tongue licks out at her lips and suddenly she clutches her stomach and brings her knees up a little. The sickness is cramping her, wracking her with a pain that Trixie remembers, a pain not so much like bearing a child but like bearing one that will never see the light, bearing something that never should have been and never will and you wouldn't think it could hurt so much but there's nothing that hurts like it, nothing in this world and Trixie sure as hell hopes there's nothing like it in the world to fucking come.

"Easy," Trixie says. She puts her hand on the widow's stomach and rubs gently, traces circles small and tight and then big and loose, gradually pressing a little harder and then harder still, until the woman's body softens and stretches out again as the pain passes from her. There's more to come, Trixie knows, but for now there should be something of a respite. Trixie's hand keeps moving, because the pain won't have disappeared but it should have eased to an ache that's almost a gift after what was felt before. "It's passing," Trixie says, "it will pass."

The widow puts her hand over Trixie's and drags it up over her stomach, up over the stiff white lace. Then she pushes Trixie's hand down, inside, the collar of her gown catching tight against Trixie's wrist and the widow's skin. Trixie can see a white line on her own skin where the fabric is digging in, a white line against the widow's throat, and then the gown tears and Trixie's hand is freed to drift down and further down.

Even against the white of the gown the widow's breast is pale, and against Trixie's sun-darkened hand the widow's skin seems made of something else, not flesh but silk or satin or some finer richer material the likes of Trixie would never have fucking heard of. The pale white peaks in pale brown, not a perfect circle but a little uneven, like a smudge made by a dirty finger tracing lightly, circling again and again, marking the woman so that someone would know just where to touch her. Trixie traces around it with her own hand and the widow gasps and arches, then grasps Trixie's hand and presses it hard against herself. Trixie's fingers dig in and the widow says, "yes," and it's the loudest strongest word Trixie's ever heard her say.

"Shh," Trixie says, but she doesn't still her hand and the widow doesn't still either, lifts herself to Trixie's touch and tosses beneath her, sweat breaking out all over now and the fever's coming out, the sickness is leaving and Trixie can't wait to see what will be fucking left when it's gone. The woman lifts herself to her, again and again, her hips moving like Trixie's hand and finally the woman reaches down and pulls her gown up.

She's bare to the waist now, a fine lady like her, naked and sweating in the sun with her lace and her silk slipping away from her shoulders, her hair tangled and sweat-slick as she rises and rises to Trixie's hand. Trixie dips her mouth down over her, lets her tongue trace down the widow's throat to where Trixie's hand is holding her. She licks the woman's breast and her own fingers at the same time, and "yes," the widow says, "yes, yes, my darling girl."

Trixie shoves her other hand hard down the woman's stomach, down between her pale thighs, and who would've fucking thought anything could be paler than the skin this woman shows to the fucking world but she's even paler where's she's secret, so pale that Trixie's fingers leave light pink traces like smudges where she presses in.

With two fingers Trixie pushes into her cunt, because it's not like this woman is fucking new to this, all appearances to the fucking contrary, two fingers in and out and in again deeper, and she covers the widow's clit with her thumb, just covers it for a moment and the widow gasps and goes still for just one moment beneath Trixie's hands, utterly fucking still and then Trixie rubs against her clit and the woman just goes fucking wild, wild under Trixie's hands and who would have thought, who would have fucking thought that this was what she was hiding beneath all that silk and lace.

When the widow comes she throws her arms out wide and her head back against the bed, naked in the bright sun. She moans so loudly Trixie thinks the whole fucking town must hear it, throws open her arms and her mouth and it's like everything that was hidden inside her is coming out into the fucking light and Trixie shuts her eyes against the brightness.

Trixie opens her eyes as the widow quiets. She's wild no more but still shaking, and Trixie keeps her hands on her, in her, just to fucking feel it. The widow raises her head and Trixie bends her own toward her, thinking to kiss her but the widow turns her mouth to Trixie's ear, her hair falling over Trixie's face. Beneath the sweat and the sickness and all the other smells of Deadwood there's a perfume there, some thick spice richer than the likes of fucking Trixie would even have fucking known.

"Alma," the widow says, "Alma," and for a moment Trixie's stupid and then she realizes what the woman wants.

"Alma," Trixie says, low into her ear, and the woman's head drops back and she looks up at Trixie and smiles as Trixie lets her hands slide from her body.

"Trixie," Alma says, still smiling up at her, squinting a little against the light. "Oh, my darling girl."

Trixie stands suddenly and walks to the window. Outside in the sunlight the town goes about its dirty fucking business as she looks down over it. She can see the whole fucking town but no one looks up at her, no one even notices, and she pulls the heavy drapes closed and again the room is dim.

From the bowl of water next to the table Trixie drinks deeply, then puts her hands under the water. It's warm now, no longer cool, and Trixie watches her hands float for a minute and then pulls them out and wipes them against her dress. She picks up the bowl to refill it.

At the foot of the bed she stops and stands looking down. "It'll pass," she says, as Alma looks up at her, blinking in the dark. "It'll pass, and you won't remember it."

"It may pass," Alma says, her voice no longer a high thin whisper. It's low and throaty, a little choked as if she's speaking around some secret most people will only ever be able to guess at.

"It may pass, Trixie, but I'll remember."


End file.
